James Cameron Defends 'Titanic' Ending, Slams 'Mythbusters' Theory That Jack Could Have Lived

James Cameron is setting the record straight on why Leonardo DiCaprio‘s character Jack had to die at the end of Titanic and why the Mythbusters theory that he could have survived is not valid.

Lots of people have questioned why Jack did not try harder to stay afloat on the board with Rose (Kate Winslet) instead of letting her survive alone.

“Look, it’s very, very simple: you read page 147 of the script and it says, ‘Jack gets off the board and gives his place to her so that she can survive.’ It’s that simple. You can do all the post-analysis you want,” James told The Daily Beast in a new interview.

Click inside to read what he said to debunk the Mythbusters theory…

“So you’re talking about the Mythbusters episode, right? Where they sort of pop the myth?” James added. You can watch the clip of the episode below!

Titanic Survival Results | MythBusters

“OK, so let’s really play that out: you’re Jack, you’re in water that’s 28 degrees, your brain is starting to get hypothermia,” James continues. “Mythbusters asks you to now go take off your life vest, take hers off, swim underneath this thing, attach it in some way that it won’t just wash out two minutes laterâ€”which means you’re underwater tying this thing on in 28-degree water, and that’s going to take you five to ten minutes, so by the time you come back up you’re already dead. So that wouldn’t work. His best choice was to keep his upper body out of the water and hope to get pulled out by a boat or something before he died. They’re fun guys and I loved doing that show with them, but they’re full of sh-t.”

During the Mythbusters episode, James made an appearance to defend the ending too.

“I think you guys are missing the point here,” he said. “The script says Jack dies, he has to die. Maybe we screwed up. The board should have been a tiny bit smaller. But the dude’s going down.”